Category: Sport

The betting appeal: Americans bet an estimated $380 billion each year on sports.

The same can’t be said for those who bet big on the Denver Broncos last Super Bowl.

They both believe they can predict the future, and they sometimes fall into the trap of making decisions with their hearts instead of their brains.

“You can hold onto your betting tickets all your life, but you’re not going to get squat,” said Stovall.

All or nothing: Gambling on sports tends to be a zero-sum game. And in neither instance can you be guaranteed to be correct,” said Randall Fine, managing director of The Fine Point Group, one of the casino industry’s largest consulting firms.

“Betting is more difficult and riskier,” said one resident of Hoboken, New Jersey, who bets on illegal gambling sites and also invests in stocks.

CNNMoney (New York) First published August 31, 2014: 8:14 AM ET

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smscript.src = (“https:” == document.location.protocol ? “https://” : “http://”) + “smartasset.com/embed.js”;. A bettor gambling on the Green Bay Packers will instantly lose his or her entire $500 bet if Aaron Rodgers and his teammates fail to win or cover the spread.

Manning is really, really good at what he does for a living. The stock might go up and down some, but it typically doesn’t go to zero. And of course, they both hate to lose.

In the long run, investors have the chance to make more money because there are fewer downside risks.

“A large, steady company has a low chance of plummeting and causing you to lose all your money, but even Peyton Manning doesn’t cover the spread sometimes,” he said. Which casino in Atlantic City, Las Vegas or Macau pays the bettor 73% of the time?” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Capital IQ.

And investors have greater access to tools that can minimize the risk of losing money. Gambling on sports may be more fun, but it’s definitely a more risky use of money than putting it in the stock market.

To put it another way, the stock market is a lot more forgiving than the MGM Grand (let alone your local sports bookie). Gambling on football star Peyton Manning to win might seem like a safe bet, especially compared with picking winners in the stock market. While many stocks offer steady returns, investors sometimes hit the jackpot (think: buying Apple back in early 2009 or Tesla in 2012). It’s easy to see why fans may be tempted to gamble on their favorite teams and athletes. He asked for his identity to be withheld due to legal concerns. For example, a stop-loss order instructs a broker to dump a stock when it tumbles below a specific price.

Those are pretty good odds.

Even the unlucky investors who jumped into the market at its peak in October 2007 eventually made their money back when stocks reclaimed their pre-recession levels in 2013.

Such hedging tools are not as readily or even feasible to sports gamblers, Fine said.

Related: How $2 billion Clippers bet could pay off

Gamblers and investors also have far different time horizons.

Related: Apple and 9 other stocks hit new records

Investors also have the ability to spread their money out among many stocks.

“You’re making a wager based on some facts and some intuitions.

“A lot of people regard investing as gambling, but I frequently say no.

At the same time, investing in stocks actually carries higher upside potential. Heck, even his commercials are funny.

A stock can theoretically be held onto for an infinite amount of time, but a sports bet can end in the blink of an eye.

However, someone sinking $500 into Apple stock has little risk of losing that entire initial investment, especially in the short term. People often invest in funds that buy dozens or even hundreds of stocks, which helps reduce the risk.

But take it from one person who has lots of experience in both worlds.

That’s the percentage of time that Stovall’s research shows the S&P 500 — the gold standard in the stock market — has increased in value during the years since 1926.

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In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action.

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Moving the line is the oddsmaker’s effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision.

Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a “preliminary” pointspread on an upcoming game. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. Reasons for such adjustments include:

How the Opening Line Is Made

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)
. Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the betting action, public perception and betting patterns must be taken into account.

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines.

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not.”

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. “You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an “adjusted line.”

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach.

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10). Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team’s power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line “feels right.” This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor).

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“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said.

What Is the Line Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football team such as USC. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Why the Line Changes

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team’s most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent

Racquetball is not televised very frequently as it is difficult to film and keep track of the ball moving at high speeds. Eventually the IRA became the American Amateur Racquetball Association which changed its name again in the late 1990s to the United States Racquetball Association. Kendler created the IRA, The International Racquetball Association.

In 1952 Joe founded the IPRA, The International Paddler’s Racquets Association. These associations are the International Racquetball Tournament, the Women’s Professional Racquetball Organization and the Legends Tour. When Racquetball is televised, the U.S. Solidified the rules and created the very first official rule book. Open championships in Memphis, Tennessee is one of the few tournaments that gets air time.

Racquetball was originally created by a man named Joe Sobek. Joe came up with the sport at the Greenwhich YMCA in a handball court. Sobek played both tennis as well as handball but was looking for an extremely fast paced sport that mostly anybody could easily pickup without a large learning curve for the rules. Soon afterwards in 1969 Robert W.

Today Racquetball has not been growing like it was in the 1970s and 1980s but the fan base stays strong with an estimated 5.6 million players.

There are currently three associations that handle professional games. In 1973 Robert left the IRA and formed two other racquetball associations none of which have became as prominent as the IRA. Sobek continued promoting the sport which was easy for most to pickup since over 40,000 handball courts exist across America.

Joe named this sport, ‘Paddle Rackets’ which eventually was renamed ‘Racquetball’ by professional tennis player Bob McInerny . Finally, in 2003, the USRA changed their name for the final time to mimic other Olympic sports associations and coined themselves United States Racquetball (USAR).